THE WORKERS
The wage-earning Hawaiian has, as the kindly French saying goes, the faults of his qualities. Naturally gay and pleasure-loving he has worked, fished, swam, sang and feasted his way through life as he listed, and it is only a generation since he took his rest with equal ease on the shores of his beloved ocean or beneath the boughs of the hau tree. Luaus and hulas were frequent and Hawaiian hospitality is still proverbial. He has never learned to say “no” to whomsoever may be the latest comer.
Each man had the grant of his ownkuleana, with a taro-field on the mountainside or up in the valley where the showers are frequent and a place to fish on the seashore. The newly prepared taro-field yielded first its wild crop of popolo; and cocoanuts, guavas, yams, mountain apples, water lemons and breadfruit were his for the gathering.
Large numbers of the natives have now, however, almost wantonly mortgaged, sold or given away their property. The temptation has been great to lease the acre or acre and a half constituting their little domain, to the Japanese or Chinese gardeners at $40 or $50 annually, and then borrow small sums from their tenants, until some morning they wake and find themselves no longer in possession.
Hundreds of families, too, still live on the lands of their old chiefs or of the kamaaina families, who pay the taxes. So long as they live they may remain there, raising their taro, flowers, chickens and pigs. The fishing of commerce has passed into the hands of the Japanese but a man’s own “catch” is sufficient for himself and family.
This “family” is apt to be made up of all his unattached friends and relatives, male and female, less well-off than himself, who sometimes pay for at any rate their food by a donation of a proportion of the family necessities in poi or canned meatsor fish. Others, however, pay nothing at all. The thrifty, hardworking man is, therefore, often heavily handicapped. The more thoughtful of the older Hawaiians say that the next ten years must bring a change: mortgages contracted with no thought of repayment (sometimes the money has been borrowed to give a luau) will fall due; competition for work will increase; and while the head of the house may at the present time be earning a comfortable living as a carpenter, a blacksmith, a painter, or a longshoreman, etc., a man in the next generation, with his rent to pay, will find that his hospitality and even his ability to care for his immediate family may be curtailed. This of course in the event of his pursuing his present improvident way.
The Hawaiian home—the wage-earner’s home—varies so that it is difficult to form any judgment of the economic status of the occupant. A tenement room, by its bareness, is apt to give an impression of extreme poverty which the facts in the case do not warrant. Cottages of well-to-do natives frequently have no furnishings but a lauhala mat on the floor and portraits of departed kings and queens on the wall. On the other hand, one happens on a heavily upholstered, gilt-picture-framed-center-table-with-the-family-Bible house which brings one back to the East Side of New York City with scarcely a jar.
The native menu is simple; one full meal a day is the rule; coffee and bread or simply a bowl of poi constituting the other two. The omission of a meal or two now and then troubles the Hawaiian not at all. Poi, fish, fruit, with an occasional indulgence in yams, taro-top-greens and pork or chicken, forms the usual bill of fare.
The holoku is still the almost universal dress of the native women. The missionary who had this sartorial inspiration was a true artist, for no other garment could give the touch of stateliness and dignity to the almost invariably full Hawaiian figure that in American attire might well be awkward and ungainly.
The native girl of pure Hawaiian blood is generally large-boned, but slender—even to daintiness when there is a mixtureof some other blood—with flashing eyes and a profusion of long, black hair, almost always with threads of grey before the twentieth year is reached. Her teeth are even and white and she laughs a great deal, particularly when she tells you that father or mother has joined the Mormons—not fatherandmother—a procedure which is becoming more and more common, and which for some reason not yet made apparent, always affords the other members of the family much amusement.
Employers say generally that Hawaiian girls, while amiable and amenable, have not the energy and push necessary to make them thoroughly efficient. There is a general impression that they are irresponsible, and that good fishing weather, a family luau or a fancied offense are each one by itself or collectively sufficient reason for discontinuing business relations. An examination, however, which was made of the time books in three distinct occupations—a cannery, a laundry and a wholesale house, showed an almost clean record for married women and girls alike, so far as absences were concerned. With the exception of a day here and there—far less than the average of absences elsewhere—the four months covered showed steady work. The girls are prompt, employers say, in coming to work in the morning, but are apt to dawdle before settling down to their occupation both in the morning and after the lunch period.
In a number of instances, it was found that work had been given up and employment changed because pay envelopes had been short several hours’ time, in spite of the fact that in every case the mistake had been corrected when called to the foreman’s attention.
None of the women or girls spoken with had any complaints to make concerning their work. Although limping painfully after a week of standing from seven in the morning until seven or eight o’clock at night—often their first experience with any sort of occupation—they stoutly maintained that they were not tired.
Managers of both canneries and laundries say that they have no difficulty in securing Hawaiian girls. An advertisement forhelp always brings more applicants than there are positions, except during the few heaviest weeks of the canning season.
One tender-hearted proprietor said he never advertised because he couldn’t bear to disappoint the girls; but always secured new workers through those he already employed. Boardinghouse keepers tell of girls who waited on the table and did chambermaid’s work during the summer to pay for their books at Normal school.
Among the most ubiquitous and characteristic of the native workers—the lei-makers and vendors—one finds few young girls. Perhaps this is because of the problem peculiar to the Hawaiian girl in Honolulu, which is created for the most part by her inheritance. The echo of the old Hawaiian traditions of hospitality, or perhaps a phase of that same hospitality which now finds expression in welcoming the stranger to her native land, tends to give the less carefully trained native girl an unreserve that, combined with a genuinely sweet and friendly nature, too often causes her to fall an easy victim to men who regard her as legitimate prey. The large transient element and especially the numbers of soldiers quartered on the island, make it actually unsafe for a girl to go about her business unmolested unless she is possessed of unusual force of character.
But in spite of this, and in spite too of the fact that the problem of subsistence has not yet become acute for the Hawaiians in Honolulu, a large number of the native women and girls, with the awakening of new desires—whether for more wearing apparel, more amusement, more education, or more opportunity—are becoming serious workers.
There is no question but that a large factor in the reason for Hawaiian girls entering the wage-earning field will be found in the fact that numbers of them are the illegitimate daughters of white men who have made no provision for either them or their mothers. Unmarried mothers are almost, without exception, taken care of with their babies by their own families, and it is difficult to make them think seriously of the future of the fatherless little one, since they are themselves still so close tothe promiscuity in sex relations of the early Hawaiian days. This type of girl, however, is by no means to be considered representative of that portion of the race which has had opportunity and careful training; and the mother of numerous illegitimate children is likely to be most careful of her daughter’s upbringing and conduct.
The kimonoed figures of the Japanese women and girls shambling gaily along form an attractive part of Honolulu’s street life. Here they enjoy a social liberty undreamed of in their native land, and the taste of it may be said to have gone to their heads. Few young women even of the economically independent families are held to the rigid regime which Japanese custom prescribes; and while here and there a girl comes through her school course with the same ideals of freedom which the American girl has come to accept as a matter of course, on the majority of Japanese girls it has had a much more violent reaction.
They are the fighters among the women wage-earners of the city, as are the men among those of their own sex, although ably seconded in this respect by the Spanish. The latter, however, are present in such small numbers that they do not play an important part in the life of the city. The Japanese who come to Hawaii are almost entirely peasants and speak a patois. As wage-earners they have bettered themselves immeasurably. Those with whom I have spoken are enthusiastic about the opportunity here. They are slowly drawing away from the plantations and are concentrating in the pineapple fields and small truck farms near the city. A number of them told me that the discrepancy between the cost of living and wages in Japan was rapidly bringing about an acute condition of affairs—that women and girls were being ground up like chaff in the industrial enterprises of their native land.
One finds few Japanese families in the tenements, the majority of small shopkeepers living in the cottages back of theirstores. The tenements have their quota of Japanese, of course, but this is almost entirely made up of single men or of couples newly married.
The generation which has been educated in the public schools—as well as in their own Japanese schools for the children attend both—is highly spoken of by both instructors and employers. Their privilege to vote will make their dual citizenship a matter which will soon require final adjustment.
The women who are entering now come as picture brides; and whereas a generation ago few Japanese children were born in Hawaii, abortionists abounded among them, the past five years has brought a change and families of at least moderate size are now the rule and are found in every part of the community, characteristically assimilating everything educational and commercial.
In the Japanese, as in the Chinese home, one fails to find the supposed rice and tea diet of the Oriental family. Unlike the Chinese wage-earners’ families who eat no vegetables but rice and the dried mushrooms from the Orient, the Japanese are very fond of cabbage, turnips, and all kinds of beans, and eat a great deal of all, as well as of rice. Fish, fresh or dried, is also a favorite article of food.
The women are not strong physically, but perform hard and exhausting work, keeping up through sheer force of spirit—the national philosophy: Bushido.
Only since the breaking up of the old dynasty and the establishment of the republic—with its votes for women—have Chinese girls and women become wage-earners outside of the home. Their entrance into the occupations has been effected by a phalanx of women and girls of all ages, from the grandmother of fifty or more down to seven and eight year old children.
The wives and daughters of the merchant class are still at home, many of them being “shut in” on reaching their fourteenthyear until their marriage to an unknown man—the eminently practical Chinese way of dealing with the “silly age.” Even these shut-in girls, however, are coming to sewing classes at the Mission schools to learn English and sewing. But why teach them to make Irish crochet bags and embroidered linen center pieces when their own beautiful Chinese embroideries are so much asked for in the Chinese shops by tourists?
The wives and daughters of the skilled and unskilled working men are finding their way into every sort of occupation, and everywhere they are making enviable records for themselves for ability, intelligence and reliability. Within the next five years the Japanese woman will have a strong competitor—one who by her training and inheritance will perhaps bring about a higher standard of stability as well as habits of work.
The Chinese employer finds it more economical to pay his men $20 a month and to feed them well himself, rather than pay him a somewhat more advanced wage and take the risk of his being sufficiently well fed at home to maintain his working efficiency. Clerks in the smaller Chinese shops, carpenters employed by Chinese builders, painters, etc., are therefore paid in this manner, and their families must bear the resulting hardships. Four or five children mean that the wife must also be a wage-earner, and the children too as soon as they are old enough—often before. But although a rice and tea diet is popularly supposed to prevail among the Chinese of this class, the only family I found subsisting on such a diet was doing so because the father had had a long illness and was paying off a debt he had contracted.
A trip through the tenements at dinner time revealed nothing more simple than a bowl of rice crowned by a plump portion of fish, which was being absorbed by a group of children in one of the alleys. Other kitchens showed pots of stewed mushrooms, soy, green salad, or fish; but always accompanied by a bowl of rice, and of course, a pot of tea.
The tenement rooms of the Chinese families are the most attractiveof any seen. The furnishings are simple, and there are always pots of flowers and ferns at the door. The women are friendly, and chat freely of their affairs so far as vocabulary will permit. Next door, however, one may find a bare room occupied by two or three men who have no families; and two or three hours later they will be there gambling and opium-smoking, breaking up the cheerful homelike aspect of the place.
In the cottages, which were often occupied by two families, the women were watering their garden patches, complaining the while that their “men too much long work, no home.” These are the wives of the clerks in the larger shops, or of merchants. Women from the adjoining cottages came to their doors and nodded a smiling greeting. All of them are much interested in the suffrage movement which under the leadership of prominent Hawaiian women is agitating Honolulu, and all vehemently say that they “laik work.”
The girls and women for the most part still wear their comfortable, becoming native costume of blue or lavender cotton; and the former especially are exceedingly attractive, with their bright faces, slender bodies and long thick braids of black hair.
Prostitution and sex immorality is almost unknown and even the polygamous household is falling into disfavor, especially with the second wives.
It will be interesting to note what their emancipation will bring to the coming generation.
The Portuguese form quite a distinct element in the community. It is curious, in discussing races in Hawaii, to hear “Portuguese and White” written and spoken of. The fact that there are a number of families of the Cape Verde or black Portuguese type in Hawaii has tended to differentiate the Portuguese as a whole.
Their presence here is wholly artificial, brought about by the assisted immigration program of the Sugar Planters’ Association;and they are the favorite workers on the best plantations. Once a Portuguese decides to remain in the country he loses no time in acquiring literally his own “vine and fig tree.”
This nationality shows the strongest contrasts of any in Honolulu, being at once the most thrifty, the largest alms-asking, the most efficient working and most hopelessly offending child laboring and school evading element in the population. A logical explanation is offered by their Consul who lays the blame for the mendicancy on the Portuguese nabobs who became millionaires by exploiting the natives in Brazil, and then returned to their own country and made their peace with God by endowing Portugal with every sort of eleemosynary institution possible to create.
Their thrift is the result of the habit of work centuries old, while the ingrained habit which fathers of all civilized nations have of raising large families and retiring from work to live on their children’s earnings at the earliest feasible time is one of the principal factors everywhere in making child labor laws a necessity. Not until there are sufficient school accommodations in Honolulu will the truant officer have an adequate basis for enforcing the compulsory school attendance law.
The girls and women are well liked by employers. They are reserved and have a hint of melancholy in their temperament which is quite foreign to other workers in Honolulu.
Portuguese families are almost a rarity in the tenement houses. The meanest sort of cottage is preferred by them, where they may cultivate their own vegetables and raise their own chickens.
While the majority of the immigrants came from the same social class, many nice distinctions have sprung up with the passing of years and the acquiring of new standards, and it is therefore impossible to characterize the Portuguese population or even the Portuguese wage-earners in Honolulu as a whole, with anything like the definiteness distinguishing the workers of other races.
TEACHERS.
Honolulu’s teaching force, like its population, includes representatives of the four corners of the earth:
These are all first-grade certificate teachers, earning salaries of from $600 to $1,000 a year. Teachers are on duty five days in the week, from 9 a. m. until 2 p. m., and the school year is nine months, with a total of three months’ vacation. The salary schedule is substantially the same as in other communities of this size, but the school day is shorter by two hours than it is on the mainland. The community is paying its teachers for their eighth year of service $75 a month—about the same pay a stenographer receives at the end of her first year’s work, with an even greater scarcity in supply, and a far more urgent need. Teachers here, as indeed they do everywhere, complain of the small pay, and those spoken with expressed a preference for longer hours and more pay.
A number of teachers were spoken to with reference to the wide discrepancy between the social and community aspect of the public and private school work in Honolulu. It was suggested that a teacher’s institute would do much to stimulate such activity, by giving opportunity for the interchange of thought among the teachers in Honolulu and those from other sections of the Islands who have a considerable amount of social activity with their school work.
This would seem to be an admirable plan, and the steamshipcompanies might be induced to grant special rates for such an occasion so that attendance would not be an unduly heavy financial burden. Reduced transportation is usually obtained for teachers’ conferences.
A number of the teachers were interested in the question of getting into closer touch with the children in their homes, and are planning to meet the parents at an early date.
There are only six teachers on the waiting list at present while on the other hand groups of children of school age continue to be seen on every block during school hours. Either the required accommodations are not yet provided, or else the compulsory law is not being enforced.
In the private schools there are forty women teachers receiving salaries ranging from $450 to $1,500 a year, and living expenses. In several instances salaries are not paid for the summer vacation; but teachers have the privilege of living at the school without expense.
While the maximum salary is greater than in the public schools, the private school work includes a comprehensive social program noted in the chapter on “Public Amusements,” which calls for much service outside of school hours.
The Territorial Teachers’ Association could do much if it would interest itself in the social problems of the city. Sociologists are coming to agree that in last analysis the teacher and the policeman are the forces which may be regarded as capable of becoming the strongest bulwarks of social betterment. Some place the policeman’s opportunity first; but in considering Honolulu’s problems I should say that the teacher might at any rate be entitled to equal consideration.
There is a wide divergence of opinion in the community concerning the question of nurses and where the supply ought to come from. At present there are about thirty-five private nurses officially registered at the Sanitorium, who earn $25 and $30 aweek. This number, I am told, fairly supplies the normal demand in Honolulu; but the nurses come and go, and not half a dozen have ties which make them an integral part of the community.
Queen’s Hospital employs regularly sixteen nurses at $50 a month and living expenses, and a head nurse at $75 a month and living expenses. This means an expense of $875 a month. A hospital of this size located in a community of the type of Honolulu should be able at an expense of $250 a month and living expenses for a superintendent of nurses and an assistant, to train a class of fifteen girls at no cost to the community other than their living expenses and about $150 a month of an allowance for their uniforms, books, etc.
Native girls who have taken hospital training on the mainland are not only giving the best of satisfaction but are earning salaries far higher than it would be possible for them to secure in any other way.
The corps of district nurses, who receive salaries of $90 a month and have continuous work, is constantly receiving additions, and the demand for this class of help in various institutions is constantly increasing.
As at present organized the three separate hospitals, Queen’s, the Children’s and the Maternity Home represent an outlay for plant and running expenses which might easily be materially lessened. A consolidation of the Maternity Home and the Children’s Hospital would not only be an economy, but would give both institutions an opportunity to give thorough training to a corps of children’s nurses, as well as to give maternity and children’s diseases practice to nurses taking training at Queen’s Hospital. Such a course is customary in other cities.
If the consolidation could be effected and a resident physician placed in charge, it would not only place both institutions on a higher basis, but would leave the supervising nurse free to train the proposed nursing classes. This would mean to subscribers to both institutions an opportunity for truly efficient giving—which in turn means the consideration of community needs first,last and always; and making a dollar perform 100 per cent of its work.
Only recently while visiting a family in Camp 2, a young baby fell from the second story porch and struck its head in falling. Owing to the necessity for immediate medical attendance it was impossible to take it to the Children’s Hospital, and the child had to be rushed down to Queen’s Hospital.
I know of nothing that is better worth doing in the community than making these changes in the hospital regime, and instituting a course of training for nurses. If the matter were given newspaper publicity young women of the city would undoubtedly furnish good material for the classes.
A circular letter sent to eighty-eight representative employers of stenographers in Honolulu, supplemented by further personal inquiry, indicates that there are about 100 women stenographers employed in the city at present, at salaries from the $40 or $60 a month usually paid to beginners, up to $100 and $150 paid those having experience from a year to eight, ten and twelve years. Over 50 per cent of the salaries range between $100 and $135 a month, and the average for all is $90 a month. As compared with mainland salaries this average is unusually high, but on the other hand the average of ability is higher and reports indicate that the stenographers in Honolulu have a generally higher level of school training than is reached in communities where numerous commercial schools, accepting pupils of any grade of intelligence who can be persuaded to take their course, have flooded the market with a supply of incompetents willing to work for any wage.
There are only three complaints of incapability, two of them being on account of lack of English, and one for lack of concentration. The others reported not capable or expert have not yet had a year’s experience, and could not reasonably be expected to have reached their full efficiency.
Vacations with pay range from one week to a month, and anumber of firms allow two or three months every three years, presumably for the trip to the mainland to tone up, which is a general custom in the islands.
Hours range almost uniformly from 9 a. m. to five p. m.
There is no public stenographic office in Honolulu. Transients and others who have occasional work are dependent on securing an unemployed stenographer haphazard, or having work done in the evening or on Sunday. This works to the disadvantage of both employer and employe, for while the latter may and in some cases does double her regular salary by overtime work, yet the strain on her physique, and especially on her eyes inevitably brings bad results.
Successful stenographers elsewhere make the largest earnings in this field of work, and veritable fortunes have been piled up by some of the large offices who make a specialty of reporting conventions, legislative inquiries, meetings, etc.
A capable stenographer should have High School training or its equivalent; unless exceptionally equipped with English. Even then High School English is desirable and a fund of general information is a valuable asset to those qualifying for secretarial positions. Of the thirty-four stenographers reported as trained in Honolulu, all but eight have such training, which undoubtedly has much to do with the high average of ability.
Seventeen of the entire number reported are Hawaiian or Hawaiian with mixed blood. Nine of the seventeen Hawaiian stenographers are receiving from $900 to $1,600 a year, and have from one to eleven years’ experience. In general their wages average as high or a little higher than those paid other nationalities. The only salaries departing from a normal scale as compared with salaries paid in Honolulu are $10 a week paid a Japanese stenographer in a law office, which is below the average paid for the same length of experience in this class of work; and the salary paid a stenographer in the office of an engineering firm, which is low both for the field of work and for the amount of experience shown. Both stenographers are pronounced capable by their employers.
The nationalities shown in the order of their numerical importance are:
American, Hawaiian, British or Canadian, Portuguese, Portuguese-German, Half-White, (Hawaiian and white), Norwegian-American, Hawaiian-Chinese, Hawaiian-French, Japanese.
It is perhaps too much to expect private teachers to confine their instruction to pupils whose English will qualify them to become efficient stenographers, but if English is found deficient additional instruction should at any rate be suggested. If a stenographer is hopelessly incompetent in English it has often been found possible to persuade her of the inconvenience her incompetence is causing her employer, and of the ill-effect on herself of wasting effort that in another field might make her services valuable. Employers can themselves do much by speaking frankly with a girl in this respect.
Here, too, a vocational bureau would be exceptionally valuable, and would tend to maintain the present satisfactory condition of the stenographic field from the standpoint both of ability of the workers and the pay they receive.
In view of the training required, and of the nature of the work performed, the salaries paid in Honolulu are not high; but they are high when compared with those paid in mainland cities where the field is overcrowded with girls unequipped with the proper qualifications but eager to make for themselves a position which is considered practically at the top of the wage-earners’ scale from a social point of view.